ANIMAL HEALTH
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1994:
Zoonosis
Tests by the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit have
concluded that the only sure way to prevent allergic reactions
to cats is “to remove the cat from the home,” Dr. Charles
Klucka recently told the American Academy of Allergy and
Immunology. “The next best thing is keeping the cat out of
the bedroom,” while the cat owner takes allergy drugs or
shots. Bathing cats in distilled water, applying a topical
spray 60 times per week, and giving them low-dose tranquil-
izers, all touted as antiallergen treatments, did not reduce the
dander of the 24 cats included in the Ford Hospital study.
Ten thousand volunteers in Connecticut, New
Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin are field-
testing a Lyme disease vaccine developed by Connaught
Laboratories, following up on a 1992-1993 test that included
300 people. Preliminary data published in the June 8 edition
of the Journal of the American Medical Association showed
that levels of Lyme antibodies increased fourfold in 23 of 24
volunteers who participated in a limited test in Albuquerque,
none of whom suffered serious side effects. A rival firm,
SmithKline Beecham PLC, is reportedly also close to testing
a vaccine for Lyme disease, which afflicts about 10,000
Americans a year, and has been found in 44 of the 50 states.